The Town of Tonawanda’s Emergency Medical is a public service organization within the Town of Tonawanda Police Department. It is a critical link in our community’s emergency medical service(EMS) system, providing high quality and advanced prehospital medical care. While many other municipalities require paramedics to be either firefighters or police officers, the Town of Tonawanda utilizes a system staffed by career paramedics. These professionals have dedicated themselves to the delivery and improvement of advanced pre-hospital emergency medical care. Based out of Police Headquarters on Sheridan Drive, the paramedics respond to a wide variety of calls for service from simple falls and assist calls to more complex medical calls and multiple traumas.

History
The Town Paramedic Unit was conceived and developed in 1974 under the guidance of Town Supervisor James V. Ryan, Medical Director Joseph Takats, and Labor Relations Director Norman Stocker. Following rigorous training of the newly hired 9 full time and 3 alternate paramedic trainees the unit went into service on August 11, 1975 and began providing basic and advanced first aid to the citizens of the Town of Tonawanda and the Village of Kenmore. In their first year of service the paramedics responded to 1,705 requests for first aid. The Paramedic Unit has several special operations units including:

On August 11, 2015 the Paramedic unit will have been in service for 40 years, one of the first paramedic units in New York State. During that time members of the unit have responded to 171, 991 requests for EMS.

Special Operations
-Bike team, which is made up of specially trained paramedics who operate on bikes to provide Emergency Medical

Care in areas where access is difficult either because of terrain or crowds.

-Honor Guard, a group who represents our unit in honoring deceased members of our department, or represents our department to pay our respects for those public safety members who have died.

-Tactical Paramedics, extensively trained paramedics who are detailed to the department’s SWAT team to provide advanced medical care and support during tactical operations.

In 2014, our emergency medical service units responded to 7640 calls for service in the Town of Tonawanda and Village of Kenmore.